


Careful, Dear Brother

by RazzmatazzWillow



Category: Bridgerton (TV), Bridgerton Series - Julia Quinn
Genre: 4+1, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Jealousy, colin pines, eloise meddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29252646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RazzmatazzWillow/pseuds/RazzmatazzWillow
Summary: “You should be careful, dear brother.” Eloise said as she took Penelope’s vacated seat. “Someone might think you were jealous.”She leaned over to steal a slice of toast from him and he slapped her hand away, taking the plate and his cooling mug of tea to his own room.Jealous. How ridiculous. He wasn’t jealous. He was… protective, sure. And, fine, maybe a little over-zealous in that regard. But not jealous.
Relationships: Colin Bridgerton/Penelope Featherington
Comments: 21
Kudos: 323





	Careful, Dear Brother

Penelope Featherington had been a staple at the Bridgerton residence for as long as Colin could remember. She and Eloise had been joined at the hip since meeting at 6, and as she lived only across the square, it was as if she was everywhere he looked. A dinner without her presence or a weekend without a sleepover were rare sights. 

Colin would never complain about Penelope constantly darkening their door, in fact he welcomed it. She would take Eloise off their hands, calm her down, make her speak at a speed humans could actually comprehend. She was also funny in her own right, outside of behaving as Eloise’s sidekick, and charming to boot. She had progressed from Eloise’s friend to his as well. So when she and Eloise had decided to move in together after university and he was just out of relationship, and therefore an apartment, it made sense for him to join them. 

Given all of this, Colin thought his reaction the first time a… suitor was caught leaving Penelope’s room early in the morning, was quite justified. Penelope was his friend, and a good one at that, and too young for such things!

“Colin, I am 22 years old, hardly a child” Penelope complained as she moved around their modest kitchen to make her breakfast that same morning. 

“Fine, maybe not too young, but certainly too good!” Colin frowned at her over his toast. “He snuck out in the middle of the night, without so much as a ‘by your leave’!”

“He did not sneak out, I asked him to go.”

Colin nearly choked on his food, “What?!”

“I had thought, incorrectly, that he would have gone unnoticed at that hour.” She turned to him with her mug of tea in hand, “Clearly, I had forgotten that some of us rise with the sun.” she rolled her eyes at him as she came to sit opposite him. 

Colin spluttered as she watched him, “Well, I- he- you-“

“What are you two prattling on about at this hour?” Eloise entered, yawning. “It’s Sunday. You know I don’t do mornings on Sundays.”

“Colin here is unimpressed in my choice of gentleman caller.” Penelope reached over and stole a slice of his toast.

“Oh, so you met him then?” Eloise asked him as she stretched and waited for the kettle to boil. 

“You knew?” Colin asked incredulously.

“I introduced them last night,” she stated matter-of-factly. 

“What?!”

“Okay, I’ve heard enough of this,” Penelope rose from her seat and headed back to her room. “It’s actually not beyond the bounds of possibility that someone would want to sleep with me, Colin. Now if you’ll both excuse me, I’m going back to bed. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

“Pen, that’s not what I meant”, Colin began but her door closed in his face. He sighed, and turned back to his half eaten breakfast. 

“You should be careful, dear brother.” Eloise said as she took Penelope’s vacated seat. “Someone might think you were jealous.”

She leaned over to steal a slice of toast from him and he slapped her hand away, taking the plate and his cooling mug of tea to his own room. 

_Jealous_. How ridiculous. He wasn’t jealous. He was… protective, sure. And, fine, maybe a little over-zealous in that regard. But not _jealous_. 

Wanting to punch the man in the face this morning was a perfectly normal reaction. And the sick, acidic feeling in his stomach when he thought about Penelope being touched by that other man, being kissed by him, being… well that was surely normal as well. 

He shook himself out of his stupor and turned to his neglected breakfast. His tea had gone cold.

¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬

Things went back to normal after that pretty quickly. Colin had knocked on Penelope’s door after a few hours and asked if she wanted to watch a movie. They’d gotten a pizza for dinner and lounged around the apartment for the day. The next morning, they had walked to the train station together and gone about their days. 

Back to normal. 

Colin didn’t feel that bitter, churning feeling in his stomach again until a few weeks later at his sister Daphne’s birthday/engagement party. The dinner had been an outrageously lavish affair, with all of the Bridgertons in attendance, as well as Daphne’s new fiancé Simon, his aunt Mrs Danbury, and of course, Penelope. The afterparty was less lavish and less respectable as was bound to happen once the parents/guardians and younger children had departed.

The club the rest of them had ended up at was one of Colin’s old university haunts, and he felt as though it fit him like a glove. Nothing had changed much in the intervening years, not even the vague smoky smell, or the patch of floor by the gents that was ever so sticky. Colin immediately got to work flirting with the bartender and securing a tray of shots for the group. 

The first round of shots soon turned to a second, and Colin felt himself get tipsy and on his way to drunk. It was at that point that he realised Penelope was no longer at his side. 

He looked around himself to try and find her. He knew this would be tricky given that she was on the shorter side, but her auburn hair had been so shiny that day, surely it would act as a beacon for him to track her down. 

As if reading his mind, Eloise leaned into him at that moment and said into his ear. “Seems Penelope’s met a friend.” He looked down to her, and she nodded her head in the direction of the bar. There she was, glass in hand, looking more and more ethereal as time passed, smiling and laughing at – 

“Oh.” Colin felt his shoulders droop. “That’s-“

“The guy from the other week, yeah.” Eloise took a sip of her drink. “His name’s Euron, by the way. So you don’t keep referring to him as the man who besmirched Penelope’s virtue.” She snorted then. “Although, I could tell you stories from uni that would make you wonder if she ever had any virtue to begin with…”

“No! No, thank you! I don’t want to hear it!” Colin dragged his eyes away from Penelope and set his drink down on the table. He suddenly didn’t want to drink anymore. All he wanted to do was march over there, grab Penelope by the hand, and take her away from that man. He didn’t know where he would take her, home maybe, or the Bridgerton family house, or the train station, or the airport, just far away from that lech, who now had his hand on her waist, and Colin thought he might vomit. 

“You alright, Col? You look positively green,” Anthony said, placing a hand on his shoulder. 

“I’m fine,” he said, refusing to look his older brother in the eye. It was then that Penelope arrived back at the table.

“El, could you pass me my coat please?” she said, smiling across the table at her friend. Eloise, grinned slyly at her as she dug through the pile of jackets at her side. “Thank you.” She took the coat when it was offered to her, and turned to leave. She paused then and turned back. “Oh, and, don’t wait up.”

Eloise wolf-whistled at her as she walked away meeting Euron at the door, the others joining into hype her up.

Colin lasted another five mins at the bar before making his excuses. He went straight home and collapsed into his bed, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t know how long he’d lain like that, when Eloise arrived home and poked her head around his door. Finding him lying prone, she sighed. 

“Careful, dear brother. Someone might think you’re jealous.” She ducked out of the room when he threw a pillow at her. 

__________

Colin had been in a bad mood all day. Now that the excitement over his sister’s engagement had died down some, and the preparations for the wedding had gotten underway, his mother had turned to the rest of her brood, wondering who else would be paired off soon. His brothers had somehow managed to avoid her gaze and subsequent interrogation, and he had now spent his whole day dodging texts and calls from his mother about her friends who wanted to set him up with their daughters. 

The day had gone from bad to worse when he ran into someone else in the gym.

“Pen?” he called, entering the apartment. 

“I’m in my room,” she replied. 

He poked his head round the door to find her at her desk typing away and eating a plate of fish and chips. 

“I know you wanted to get Chinese tonight, but I was ravenous when I got home so I made some dinner, there’s more in the oven if you want some.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he stood there for a second, before taking a step into the room and leaning against the wall. “So I ran into some today.”

“Yeah?”

“At the gym.”

“Mmhmm”

“It was Euron, actually.” At this, Penelope stopped typing.

“Oh?” she asked, turning to face him. 

“He came over to talk, actually,” he watched as she perked up at this, “said he thought we’d gotten off on the wrong foot”, she dimmed a little, remembering their first meeting.

“Well, that was very good of him, to make the first step.” She said, turning back to her writing. 

“Yeah, yeah, very good of him. He was with a friend, as it happens and then he said the funniest thing,” Penelope stopped writing again, realising this story wasn’t over yet. “He introduced me as his girlfriend’s roommate!” he gave a little chuckle, never taking his eyes off of her. 

She shrugged, “I don’t get the joke.”

His smile turned into a grimace she had never seen on his face before. “He called you his girlfriend.”

“Yes.” 

He paused for a second now. “Are- are you his girlfriend?”

“Yes.” Penelope looked a cross between worried for his wellbeing and offended at his incredulity.

“He’s your boyfriend.”

“Yes, Colin!” she stood up now. “Is it so wild to think that a man would like me enough and be attracted to me enough to want a relationship with me?”

“No, that’s not what I meant by that…” Colin tried to explain.

“Then what did you mean?” she demanded.

Colin opened and closed his mouth, looking like he was trying to speak but no words would emerge. In any other scenario, Penelope would laugh at him for his excellent impression of a dumbfounded fish. Instead, she pushed him out of her room with a scowl and closed the door. A few moments later, he heard music through the door, her “Leave Me Alone, I Need To Write” playlist. 

He stood there a while longer, staring at her door, until he heard a throat being cleared behind him. Turning he saw Eloise and Daphne, curled up on the couch with a freshly popped bowl of popcorn between them, and a rom-com paused on the telly. He felt his face flush. 

“Do I even need to say it?” Eloise asked, looking up at him. 

“Say what?” he asked, and then cursed himself for stepping into another embarrassing moment.

“Careful, dear brother, someone might think-“

“Oh bugger off, El.” He stalked off to his own room then. 

Daphne and Eloise looked at each other and shrugged, before turning back to their movie.

¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬

The atmosphere in the apartment was overall chilly. Colin and Penelope appeared to be avoiding each other completely, and Eloise had been feeling the repercussions. For the last week she had been watching as the two of them attempted to go about their lives without each other. It was so awkward. Like the two of them were dancing the same dance, but with their backs to one another. 

Colin started leaving earlier for work to avoid catching the train with Penelope. Penelope started staying at Euron’s more often. Eloise watched all this from her station as ‘neutral ground’ and prayed one of them would pull their heads out of their asses sooner rather than later. 

“Hey, El, do you mind if I borrow your earrings? You know the gold ones, with the blue drops?”

Eloise looked up from her book, “Yes, they should be on the dresser.” She looked over her friend’s outfit, “you look very nice!”

“Thank you” Penelope met her eyes through the mirror as she put on the earrings. “I’m meeting Euron for dinner.”

“And looking like a snack!” Eloise teased.

Penelope blushed, “Oh you are terrible, you know”

“Yes. Yes, I do” Eloise smiled at her friend, and followed her out of the room. “Will you be coming home tonight?” 

“Eloise!” Penelope exclaimed, “what a bold question!”

“Oh come on, Pen! How am I to live vicariously through you if you don’t tell me all the sordid details?” Eloise whined.

“By using your imagination.” Penelope giggled, “I must be off, dinner’s at 7.”

She opened the door to find Colin standing there, key in hand, looking as though he had been about to unlock the door. They stood in silence, looking at each other. Colin cleared his throat, coming out of his stupor.

“You look very nice tonight, Penelope.”

Penelope stared at him a while longer before coming to. “Thank you, Colin.” They stared at each other some more. “I, um, I’d best be off.”

“Yes, of course,” he stepped out of her way to allow her to pass and watched her as she left. He didn’t know how long he stood there, long after she was out of sight, when Eloise tapped him on the shoulder. 

“Are you going to come in?” she asked. 

Colin shook himself before following her in, closing the door behind him. “She really did look very nice,” he said quietly. 

Eloise looked up at him from where she had been studying the menu for the Indian takeaway down the street. She smiled a little. “Careful, dear brother, someone might think you’re jealous.”

Colin took a deep breath. “They’d be right.”

Eloise’s head snapped up to look at him. “Sorry, what?”

“They’d be right.” Colin took off his jacket and went to sit on the couch, Eloise following him. “I am jealous. I’m a complete moron, and I’m jealous.”

Eloise sat next to him and curled her legs under herself, giving him her full attention. “When did you figure it out?”

“About 30 seconds ago.” He was staring blankly ahead. “I guess I’ve been blind about the whole thing all this time.” He turned to look at her. “I’m in love with Penelope.”

Eloise rubbed her hand up and down his arm. “Well, we knew you’d get there eventually but I’ll be honest, I didn’t think it would take this long.”

Colin frowned, “We? Who’s we?”

“Oh, the whole family knows. Pen’s sisters too. We’ve had a bet on it for years.” Eloise looked put out, while Colin stared at her. “God, Francesca’s going to be so rich.”

“You bet on me figuring out my feelings?”

“Good thing you got there this month though, we’d all have been paying Prudence if you had waited much longer, and I’d rather not give my hard-earned cash to that wench.”

“You bet on my feelings?!”

“Yes, obviously, Col, do keep up.” Eloise looked back at him then and softened. “Sorry. This is all still new to you, I’m probably not helping.”

“Yeah, probably,” he said, sarcastically. He leaned forward to put his head in his hands and sighed deeply. “What am I going to do? She’s out right now, looking like that, with Urine…”

Eloise snorted, “Okay yes, that is funny, but we are grown ups and we will not stoop to childish nicknames.”

“El,” he turned his head to her, maintaining his bent over stance, “seriously. What do I do?”

She dropped the grin and remained silent for a minute, before shaking her head slightly. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.” She then pulled him into a hug where they remained until Eloise’s stomach reminded her of her hunger. 

__________________________

Colin couldn’t sleep that night. He had been in his room, staring at his ceiling, ears straining for any sound of Penelope returning home. Eventually, when the clock on his bedside locker read 3am, he gave up any pretence of rest and went into the kitchen. His thoughts certainly may fail him, but food would never. Breakfast foods are still breakfast foods, even if you never went to sleep. 

He was just scooping his scrambled eggs out of the pot when he heard the key in the door. Whipping around, he watched as a very dishevelled and sleepy looking Penelope walked in the door. She stopped after closing the door behind her and stared at him. 

“Colin? What are you doing? It’s three o’clock in the morning.” She frowned at his state as she dropped her keys and bag on the table and removed her jacket. 

Colin realised what a sight he must make, pyjama bottoms, ratty zip up hoodie, hair a mess and half empty pot of scrambled eggs in hand. “I, I, I couldn’t sleep, so… eggs.” He cursed himself under his breath, could he sound any more like an idiot?

Penelope, for her part, simply nodded at him. “Got any to spare?” she asked, reaching down to take off her boots. 

“Oh, I, sure, I’ll make you a plate.” He turned away from her for a second to gather himself, and put together her portion. When he turned back to her, she was sitting at the table, picking at her chipped nail polish. “You dish is served” he said as he presented it to her. She smiled and thanked him.

They sat in silence as they ate. Colin wanted nothing more than to ask her about her night. Why was she home? What had happened with Euron? Was she ever going to forgive him for being a twat for the past few weeks? How did she look so good at 3 o’clock in the morning?

When Penelope finished her food, she took her plate to the dishwasher, then gathered up her bag, jacket and shoes. She squeezed Colin’s shoulder as she passed. He could only hope she hadn’t felt the way he melted at her touch, all the tension leaving his body. 

“Goodnight, Colin.” She said, as she entered her room. 

“Goodnight,” he said, watching her leave. 

Colin spent another few minutes at the table, staring at the seat she had just occupied. His eggs went cold, but he no longer felt hungry. Making a plan, he abandoned his midnight snack, and went to bed, feeling confident and ready. In the morning, he would begin courting Penelope Featherington. 

And so he enacted his plan. The next morning he made her a proper breakfast, not a 3am thrown together eggs on toast. Over the next few days, he bought her flowers, and made sure to actually tell her how beautiful she looked, rather than just think it. 

After a week, he heard from Eloise that Penelope had broken up with Euron. He was sure she had elaborated on why, but his heart was beating in his ears too loudly to hear anything other than, “she dumped him”, on a loop. He usually would have listened to his sister raptly, for she more often than not had interesting things to say, but this time he found himself zoning out completely.

_Single_.

Penelope was _single_.

He waited two weeks before he put the next step of his plan into motion. One Friday evening, he bribed Eloise into going to stay at Ben’s, and she had only managed to get the words, “Careful, dear-“ before he had shut the door behind her and gotten to work. 

Later, Penelope opened her bedroom door after a long afternoon of writing and editing, and found Colin waiting in the kitchen, with dinner ready, roses in a vase and candles lit. 

“Colin? What’s going on?” she asked, perplexed, looking around as though she assumed she had interrupted his date.

“Dinner is served, m’lady.” He said with a flourish and a bow. She looked at the table and saw her favourite dinner still steaming at her spot, and a wine glass ready to be filled. 

She felt slightly stunned as she made her way to the table, and also underdressed, as she took in Colin’s tailored suit trousers and crisp white shirt. Taking her seat, she waited until he had poured the wine before asking the question that was on her mind. 

“What exactly is happening here?” 

“I’m wooing you.” Colin said, very straightforwardly. He had decided to stop beating around the bush on this. Subtlety was not his strong suit. 

“Excuse me?” Penelope nearly choked on her wine. 

“I’m wooing you.” Colin repeated. “I know you broke up with Euron. And I know I acted like an idiot while you two were together. It seems I needed someone to give me a kick to realise my feelings.” Colin held his hands together, afraid he would twitch nervously if he let go. “The reason I hated seeing you with him, was because _I_ wanted to be with you. I want to be with you.” 

Penelope stared at him. After a while, she swallowed and said, “That’s not fair.” She made sure to hold eye contact with him while she said this, “I’ve wanted to be with you since I was a little girl. You can’t just decide you don’t like seeing me be happy.” Colin looked down at this. “I deserve better than that.”

“Yes, you do.” He said, looking up at her again. The earnestness in his eyes made her catch her breath. A moment passed while they looked at each other, finally _seeing_ each other.

“If you really mean this,” Penelope said after a deep, centring breath, “you’ll have to be okay with taking it slow. Really slow.”

“I can do slow,” Colin assured, smiling softly at her. “So, how about we start with dinner?” he picked up his fork and held it aloft, waiting for her answer. 

She couldn’t help but smile back him and nod, “Dinner sounds good.”

¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬

Years later, when Eloise made her Maid of Honour speech at the Featherington-Bridgerton wedding, she made plenty of use of the phrase, “Careful, dear brother,”

For once, looking down at Penelope beaming back up at him, Colin didn’t mind.

**Author's Note:**

> Only starting to get back into writing so all comments are appreciated!!


End file.
